Big Red

by Jim Kjelgaard

  Danny rose, and with Red padding beside him travelled straight up the top of the mountain. He crossed the valley at its head, crossed the next mountain to the one beyond, and swung down it. He came off its sloping nose into a forested valley, and struck due east. But all the while he had been both studying the ground beneath him and watching Red. The big setter had stalked away three or four times to hunt partridges that he had scented in the thickets. But not once had his nose gone to the ground, and Danny had seen no bear track leading away. Old Majesty, then, was somewhere within the circle he had made.

  Danny walked due east, crossing the noses of the mountains whose heads he had walked around, and returned to the foot of the slope where the grub-ridden logs lay. He walked around it, up the valley that separated it from the next hill, and again sat down to ponder. He ate bread smeared with bacon grease, gave Red some, and sat down with his back against a boulder. Twilight came, and erratic bats swooped up and down the little stream before him. But pitch darkness had descended on the wilderness before Danny started up the mountain again.

  He left his pack beside the stream, carrying only a three-cell flash-light and his rifle as he climbed. The wind still blew steadily from the west. A whip-poor-will shrieked, and Red halted to peer toward the sound. Danny waited for the big dog to catch up with him. He was still a hundred feet below the mountain’s crest when he stooped to crawl.

  The back of his neck tingled, and little shivers ran up and down his spine. Old Majesty, just twice in his whole terrible career, had been seen in daylight by men who carried rifles. Ross had missed his shot, and Danny had dared not shoot for fear that a wounded bear might injure Red. But, though the big bear had been hunted many times by day, as far as Danny knew this was the first time anyone had ever thought of stalking him by night. He reached the summit of the mountain, and felt in the darkness for Red. His fingers found and clenched the big dog’s fur.

  Almost imperceptibly he felt Red stiffen, and Danny laid the rifle across his knees while his other hand stole forth to clamp about the big setter’s muzzle. He thrilled with pride. Again his guess had been the right one. Old Majesty had not wandered away, but after eating his fill of grubs had merely gone to sleep in some secluded thicket. Now he was back. From down the slope came the ripping sound of another log being torn apart. Then an eerie silence.

  It was broken by the buzz of an insect in a nearby tree, and Danny snapped his head erect. A light wind blew out of the valley. Red maintained his tense stance. The wind eddied around, blowing from all directions, and Red shrank close to the earth. A clammy hand brushed Danny’s spine. He let go of the dog’s muzzle to pick up his rifle. He clutched it very tightly, wrapping his fingers about the breech with one hand on the trigger. Something was happening out there in the darkness, something that only Red could interpret, and in that moment Danny knew that he was afraid.

  Red turned his head, and held it poised while he remained rooted in his tracks. Slowly he swung his body about, facing up the ridge now instead of into the valley. Inch by inch he continued to turn, facing down the other side of the razor-backed ridge, and swinging until he had made a complete circle and was staring into the valley again. Then, Danny understood. He bit his lip so hard that he felt the taste of blood in his mouth, and let go of Red’s ruff to reach into his pocket for the flashlight.

  They were hunting Old Majesty, but there in the black night the great bear was also hunting them. He had come back to feed on the grubs in the dead logs, scented Danny and Red, and rather than run again had elected to try conclusions in the darkness, the time that he favored most and that was most favorable to him. Danny swallowed hard as the complete realization of that was driven home to him, but he grasped it perfectly. Old Majesty was no ordinary bear, but bigger, wiser, fiercer, and more intelligent than any other bear that Danny had ever known. Beyond a doubt he remembered Red, and that Red had once brought him to bay. Even though he might now fear the dog, he still knew that he would have to fight it out sooner or later, and was selecting that fight to his own advantage.

  In the darkness he had walked clear around them, nerving himself to the attack and trying to choose the best method for it. Now he was just a little way down the hill, looking them over, reading them with his nose and listening for their next move. Danny drew back the hammer of his rifle, and in the night its metallic little click was startlingly loud. He held it in his right hand, clutching the flashlight with his left, and spoke softly,

  “Stay here, Red. Stay with me.”

  Down the slope pebbles rattled, and there was the scraping of a claw on a rock. Danny thought hard, trying in his mind to reconstruct an exact picture of the mountain side as he had seen it earlier that morning. The nearest big rock, he thought, was about sixty yards from where they stood now and Old Majesty must have walked on it. Half-tempted to flash the light and shoot, he hesitated. The bear might come nearer, present a fairer shot. If he did not, if instead of attacking he chose to run, Danny could always urge Red forward to follow him. Somewhere in the lost wilderness Red would once again bring Old Majesty to bay.

  Red was once more facing up the ridge, and had taken two stiff-legged steps forward. Danny poised the flashlight and rifle. Red did not turn his head again, so the bear was standing still. Danny snapped the light on. Its white beam travelled into the night to fall like a silver cage about something huge and black, something that stood scarcely twenty yards up the spine of the ridge. The wind blowing out of the valley eddied around it, curled the long hair that hung from its belly.

  Danny raised the gun, supported it on the hand in which he gripped the light, and aimed in its uncertain glow. This, he thought, was not real or right. It was something that you did only in a dream, and awoke to find it a blurred memory. But the cold trigger about which his finger curled was real enough, as was the crack of the rifle and the little tongue of red flame that licked into the darkness. He heard the sodden little “splot” as the bullet struck and buried itself in flesh. Red’s battle roar rang through the night, and at almost exactly the same second the big dog and Old Majesty launched themselves at each other.

  Danny shot again and again, desperately working the lever of his gun and pumping bullet after bullet into the oncoming black mass. A feeling of hopelessness almost overwhelmed him. The bear kept coming. It was as though Old Majesty was a monstrous thing, an animated mass of something that had no more life than a stone or a rock, and upon which bullets had no effect. Wide-eyed, Danny saw it within thirty, then twenty feet of him, and in that moment he knew that he would have died if it had not been for Red.

  The big setter met the charging bear, and closed with him. Old Majesty’s paw flashed, raked down the dog’s chest, and Red reeled away to roll over and over on the ground. His attention diverted from Danny, Old Majesty lunged after the dog.

  Danny shook his head. He seemed still to be in a dream, in the throes of something terrible from which sane awakening only could release him. Feverishly he found himself ripping the box of cartridges apart, pumping more bullets into the rifle’s magazine. His legs seemed to belong to someone else as he ran forward through the night, held the muzzle of his gun within two feet of Old Majesty’s ear, and pulled the trigger. The big bear jerked convulsively, quivered, and settled down to stretch his great length on the earth.

  For a moment Danny stood pale and trembling, the gun dangling by his side and the flashlight painting the unreal scene before him. He saw Red, whose coat was now stained with crimson, rise on three legs and prepare to renew the battle. He lunged at the bear, but stopped and turned toward Danny, his jaws very wide open, panting hard. Danny faltered, the rifle clattered to the ground, and tears rolled unashamed from his eyes. Red was everything Danny had thought him and very much more. Beautiful, courageous, strong—and noble. He would fight to the death if need be, but would not molest or disgrace a fallen enemy. Danny snapped back to reality.

  “Red!”

  The cry was wrenched from him. He ran forward to k
neel beside the wounded dog. His hand strayed to Red’s left chest and leg. Blood trickled through his fingers as he felt torn flesh and muscles. Even as he turned the light on, he knew that Red would never win another prize in a dog show. His left front leg was ripped half away. Danny picked the dog up, and carried him down the mountain to where he had left the pack. He knelt beside him, dusted the gaping wounds with sulfa powder, and wrapped a clean white bandage around them. Danny took off his jacket, made of it a soft bed for the big setter, and built a fire.

  Morning came slowly. The sun strove to break through the mists that blanketed the valley, and the little stream ran quarrelsomely on. Red lay stiffly on the coat, but raised his head to grin and wagged his tail in the dawn’s dim light. Danny unwrapped the blood-soaked bandage and looked at the wound. There was no infection. But it would be a long time before Red was able to travel. Danny rigged his fish-line, and caught trout in the little stream. In the middle of the afternoon he climbed back up the mountain, and looked at the still form of Old Majesty. Danny shuddered. Even now, if it was not for that giant, quiet thing, last night would be like a dream. But let the bear lie where it was, let it remain, a fallen king, in the wilderness it had once ruled.

  Day followed day as they camped by the little stream. Red got up from his bed to walk stiffly about, and Danny watched with his heart in his eyes. Red’s wounds were healing well, but an ugly scar showed and he would never again have much use of his left front leg. Danny gathered the dog to him, and hugged Red very tightly.

  On the eighth day, with Red limping behind him, he started down the valley toward home. They camped that night in another little valley, under the shadow of Stoney Lonesome’s laurel thickets. With Red’s fine head pillowed on his lap, Danny sat before the leaping little fire he had built and stared into the darkness. Somehow he seemed to have changed. The old Danny Pickett had gone forth on the outlaw bear’s trail, but a new one was returning. And the new one was a Danny Pickett able to do what he never could have done before.

  Late the next afternoon they broke out of the beech woods into the clearing and saw the shanty. Danny stopped, and his left hand strayed down to rest on the big setter’s head. Ross stood on the porch. But that gray-haired, crisp man dressed in sports tweeds who was at the foot of the steps talking with Ross could be none other than Mr. Haggin. Danny shook his head wonderingly. The old Danny Pickett would have been terrified at bringing Mr. Haggin’s dog back as he was bringing Red. But the new Danny seemed able to do it, to cope with and meet this problem just as he could cope with others. He walked slowly across the pasture toward the shanty. And for some reason that, too, seemed to have undergone a change. Asa and the four hounds were gone. Ross, Sheilah, Red, and himself, remained. That fact alone seemed to have brought about the transformation.

  Danny’s glance paused briefly on the sling in which his father’s left arm rested, then strayed to Ross’s face.

  “Where is he?” Ross asked.

  “Dead,” Danny said. “Dead up on a ridge. We met him in the night. Red and me killed him in the dark.”

  Ross nodded. “Good thing,” he murmured.

  Danny swung to face the stern-visaged Mr. Haggin. Red pressed very closely against his legs, and Danny’s dangling hand rested on the big dog’s head.

  “I did it,” he said. “It’s my fault and mine alone. I let him get at the bear. If I hadn’t of taken him along, he wouldn’t of been hurt. But I did take him along and he is hurt; he’ll never go to another show. He’s spoiled for you. But he’s never spoiled for me and never will be. If you’ll sell me Red I’ll pay you every cent of the seven thousand dollars he cost you.”

  He heard and paid no attention to Ross’s incredulous gasp. Something strong seemed to have grown within him. He was not the Danny Pickett who had been born and lived in poverty all his life. He had cast off the old shackles, the confining bonds that said he and Ross had to struggle along as best they could. If others could do big things so could he.

  “I haven’t got seven thousand dollars and you know I haven’t. But I can get it—in time I can get it. And I’ve got to have Red; I can’t part with him. He’s got to be mine. And I tell you again that I’ll give you every cent you paid for him if only you’ll sell him to me!”

  Mr. Haggin said suddenly and unexpectedly, “That’s a reasonable enough offer and I’ll accept it. But in one way you’re thinking like a fool.”

  “Why?”

  “Because a man was hurt by that bear. If he hurt one man in time he’d kill another, and no matter how valuable it might be, any man’s life is still worth more than any animal’s. If you had to have Red to help you hunt that bear down you did right taking him and you know it.”

  “I thought the same thing.”

  “Then whatever led you to believe that I’d think otherwise? Furthermore, Danny, it’s good business for me to sell you that dog. He’s won best of breed, and will never win best of show simply because he isn’t quite good enough. Then there are little matters like stud fees. You can put him out at stud for fifty or seventy-five dollars, and any breeder in the country with a good bitch will be glad to pay it. Of course, if you don’t want the fee you can usually take your pick of the resulting litter. By the way, now that you have more responsibilities, I’m raising you to a hundred dollars a month. I’ll hold back fifty, and apply it on what you owe me for Red. About next year, if everything works out the way I think it will, you can name your own salary. Men really capable of handling a dog aren’t easy to find, and even if we can’t take Red back we can show Sheilah again this year. I want you to take her into the ring, but maybe we’ll let Bob handle the pup if we enter one.”

  “Pup?” Danny was still dazed.

  Mr. Haggin grinned. “How do you like Sheilah, Danny?”

  “She’s a wonderful dog.”

  “Your dad thinks so too. He …”

  “I told him I’d allus been a hound man,” Ross admitted a trifle sheepishly. “But that Sheilah, doggone her hide! She’s an awful lot of dog. I asked Mr. Haggin if he minded if I sort of worked with you on these setters ’stead of gettin’ more hounds. Not that I’m ever goin’ to forget Mike and those pups. But these setters … I ain’t askin’ no pay.”

  Mr. Haggin winked at Danny. “He might even be worth a salary when we get a really big string of setters, eh? Dr. Dan MacGruder went abroad, Danny; took a post in China. He hadn’t any good place to leave Sheilah, so he sold her to me dirt cheap. But come on, Danny, we have something to show you.” He grinned again. “Just remember that you didn’t own Red until a few minutes ago, so we’ll sort of have to work together on this. Of course the next time you can have your pick of the litter.”

  Danny followed Ross and Mr. Haggin around the corner of the shanty, and came upon Sheilah stretched out in the warm sun. She raised a proud head to look at them, and wagged her tail in happy greeting to Red. Danny stared, spellbound.

  Five blunt-nosed puppies all snuggled contentedly against their mother’s flank. But one, a little bigger and stronger than the rest, raised his head when he heard unaccustomed noise. And, puppy though he was, even now there was about him an invisible but very definite aura of the essence that Danny knew as quality. It was as though the tiny mite of dogdom had inherited all the finest qualities of both his father and mother, and in so doing was just a little finer than either one. Danny smiled, very happily, and in the tiny pup saw the incarnation of all the dreams that had troubled him since he had first begun to appreciate a fine thoroughbred dog.

  But in the back of his mind still another and even more indistinct vision already seemed to be crowding the first. The tiny pup was only one step forward, and there would be many, many more.

  Red walked stiffly up. His tail wagged as he sniffed noses with Sheilah, and looked carefully at his two sons and three daughters.

  * * *

  About the Author

  Jim Kjelgaard spent his boyhood in country much like that described in this book. “Those mountain
farms,” he remembers, “produced more rocks to the acre than anything else. But they provided my brothers and me with plenty of ammunition for fighting the neighboring boys across the creek. One of our jobs was to shoo the cows out of the corn patch, which was more exciting than it sounds. There were always two or three yearling bulls in the dairy herd, and when we wanted to get home quickly, we’d each grab one by the tail. The bulls would light out for the barn, their feet hitting the ground about every two yards, and ours in proportion. But the really entrancing thing was the forest that surrounded us: mountains filled with game, and trout streams loaded with fish.”

  Jim’s first book was Forest Patrol, based on the wilderness experiences of himself and his brother, a forest ranger. Big Red, Irish Red, and Outlaw Red are dog stories about Irish setters. A Nose for Trouble and Trailing Trouble are adventure-mysteries centered around a young game warden and his man-hunting bloodhound. Kalak of the Ice (a polar bear) and Chip, the Dam Builder (a beaver) are wild-animal stories. Snow Dog and Wild Trek describe the adventures of a trapper and his half-wild dog. Haunt Fox and Lion Hound are stories written from the viewpoints of both the hunter and the hunted. Rebel Siege and Buckskin Brigade are tales of American frontiersmen, and Fire-Hunter is a story about prehistoric man.

  * * *

  Publication Info

  copyright 1945 by jim kjelgaard

  copyright © renewed 1973 by edna kjelgaard

  printed in the united states of america

  * * *

  Front Flap

  BIG RED

  By JIM KJELGAARD

  Illustrated by Bob Kuhn